For over a year now I've been developping a Gentoo-based LiveCD called FLY for the community of CriticalSecurity.NET It's evolved quite a bit and very AM this morning, I made public the latest version; 0.7.0

Firstly, lets go over the changes: (in order that I wrote them in the devlog)

timezone data is an important aspect of any computer's clock. So now FLY has had three changes with respect to timezone data. Firstly, it is compiled now with /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern as it's default timezone (/etc/localtime). Second (and third) the contents of /usr/share/zoneinfo are now provided in the extra data downloaded as part of the installation (installdata-0.7.0.tar.bz2) and the installer will now prompt the user to select the desired timezone. This is done using a (IMO) rather intuiative bash function I designed. Of course that is a little biased. I'll let you decide and comment on this new feature!

next, this version (and subsequent versions) now function by using a regular account as opposed to using the root account. This makes FLY a lot safer to use as you cant accidentally blow up the universe without first su'ing to root. Of course, some commands require root (such as gparted, the aircrack-ng suite, the installer, etc) and therefore sudo has been added to FLY. /etc/sudoers has been set to give the regular account (username fly) access to specific commands with a nopasswd prompt. All the previous designed functionality has been maintained using the regular user account. As well, this means during installation (even on quick install) you'll already have one user account you can use. Eventually, I'd like to get the root account locked out from SLiM and Xorg to provide extra security. As well, perhaps at some point I'd like to get some boot-time generated passwords for both root and regular user accounts. There has been talk of this before and worries about lack of entropy, but Im sure we can figure something out. Perhaps adding a hash file to the LiveCD with various different hashes that FLY would randomly pick to add to it's entropy pool. These hashes would change with each new version. Still not 100% secure but it would at least help a lot I think. Anyways, thats another topic altogether. The regular account's password for this version is 'fluffy'

due to the new regular user account, various files and directories have had their ownership and permissions changed to permit access by the regular user account. In some instances, this allows the file to be run but not modified.

Conky has had several tweaks as well. The networking section of Conky now displays information about the IP of your default gateway (router) and your gateway's public IP. The former is done by a simple function of Conky and the latter is done by running a script to check your IP via http://www.whatsmyip.com Both of these fields will display 'No Address' whenever a default gateway is not configured on the system. This means that both fields will work regardless of whether you used dhcpcd or a static IP.

This version now has some much needed official theme artwork. Thanks to Havoc Ace for providing a nice image based on my photography (hey I gotta take *some* of the credit :rolleyes: ) SLiM now uses this artwork and a new default StyleSwitcher theme has been created as well. Makes it look kinda Windows 95 era ish but oh well. Of course the existing blue and earth themes are still included.

Previously, when updating the definitions for ClamAV using freshclam, two warnings would be generated following the update, and this may have confused the user. These warnings were related to freshclam's config set to update the clamav daemon once definitions were updated. Since FLY doesnt use clamav in daemon mode, this would generate errors. So freshclam's config file has been edited so that it does not try to talk to the daemon.

The installer has had quite a few changes, though mostly trivial. A few appearance fixes, notably when displaying the new partitions, that looks cleaner and I preserved the headings of each command run (fdisk -l and df -h) other fixes include properlly shutting down if the download of extra data fails. Previously it would just exit but wouldnt unmount the hard drive. Also fixed is the user section of the compile install. Since there is a regular user account on the LiveCD now, this section has been redesigned to offer the user the chance to either keep this account, or modify it to a different username. I havent figured out how to modify the groups but I suspect thats a groupmod command or something. (hey its 1:30am gimme a break ) One major new aspect to the installer is the addition of timezone selection. In both install methods, the user will be prompted to select his timezone. This is done via a seperate function in the main script which runs a menu-style selection process. Firstly by listing the directories in /usr/share/zoneinfo and then by allowing the user to select a timezone within one of these directories. Its very basic though. The function assumes that to select a timezone you MUST go into one directory and then select the timezone file. It does not allow for timezones in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ nor does it allow for two directories to be passed, such as /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Kentucky/Louisville One failure I noticed in the installer is ufed, which is a utility that is run in the compile install to select use flags. It complains that it's terminal window is too small and refuses to run. So I've commented that out and will fix it later. (Hey I was a tad bit lazy)

The main reason for the jump in filesize of this version (360mb versus 314mb) is the inclusion of VLC - which pulled in QT libs - and wine. The latest Xorg update also pulled in about 65 new packages, mostly fonts and simple commands.

mplayer has been removed from this version and replaced with VLC. Cause I like VLC better. So deal with it Also removed from this version is ati-drivers, as it is being discontinued in favour of xf86-video-ati (which has always been in FLY) The former was too buggy and very often failed to compile.

Two issues I have found with 0.7.0 already, but have been unable to solve are: one, Privoxy refuses to start (/etc/init.d/privoxy start) Im not sure why. But without it, you cant use Tor on Firefox. two, adobe-flash seems to like playing videos at about 4 times normal speed in Firefox. So that means watching Youtube is out of the question. I have the same adobe-flash version on my laptop and it runs fine. I've posted about this issue on Gentoo's forums and am awaiting a reply.

Fewf, so thats pretty much it. I like this version a lot, and I hope you will enjoy it too!

I like it!
Especially the "earth" theme (I`m in love with this theme).
I miss mc ... ?
Reiser4 support is missing (that's understandable: you are using gentoo sources )
And there is no "/etc/init.d/dhcpcd" script (but dhcpcd works)

Keep up the good work *hugs*

P.S. I`m making this post from FLY-0.7.0 livecd _________________"Dear Enemy: may the Lord hate you and all your kind, may you be turned orange in hue, and may your head fall off at an awkward moment."
"Linux is like a wigwam - no windows, no gates, apache inside..."

Hey thanks for trying it out! Did all your hardware work ok?
mc... midnight commander?

I took out dhcpcd on boot up if thats what you meant, as its not always practical, no network, wrong interface, no dhcp, or simply, dont want to connect, etc.

Cheers!

Yes my hardware was correctly recognised.
Yes mc=midnight commander
In my post i mean that dhcpcd script in /etc/init.d/ is missing i.e. "/etc/init.d/dhcpcd start" command does not work _________________"Dear Enemy: may the Lord hate you and all your kind, may you be turned orange in hue, and may your head fall off at an awkward moment."
"Linux is like a wigwam - no windows, no gates, apache inside..."

Out of curiosity, can you post an lspci and describe your hardware? I havent had the chance to test it on a lot of different systems.

But in my current gentoo system i have /etc/init.d/dhcpcd and it`s added to the boot runlevel O_o

lshw: http://pastebin.com/m33e5e377_________________"Dear Enemy: may the Lord hate you and all your kind, may you be turned orange in hue, and may your head fall off at an awkward moment."
"Linux is like a wigwam - no windows, no gates, apache inside..."